16th Workshop – Thai Table
What makes Thai Table so appealing for me, is where it came from and how it came to be. Most of the wood is salvaged logs from Oregon – Western Walnut from the Willamette Valley, White Oak and Oregon Ash from Roseburg and Myrtle from the Southern Oregon Coast. Having grown up in Oregon, that goes straight to the heart.
Sharon Khosla of 16th Workshop explains how she and her husband Chris go about selecting that perfect piece of table top wood: “The selection of the table top wood starts with trying to get two pieces that are book matched. Other than that, we look for wood that is pretty simple and clean so that it does not grab too much attention away from the base and the overall proportion of the elements. We avoid the use of live edge because it has a tendency to do just this. Telling the story that this indeed is a singular piece of wood from a tree is still very important but we try to balance this with the proportioning.”
So now that we know where the wood came from, how does Thai Table come to be? I think a detailed explanation of what goes into making something makes you appreciate it even more. Sharon was nice enough to provide that explanation. Although I have heard most of these woodworking terms before, I wasn’t sure I could actually visualize what they truly meant. So I have included links for terms that might require a visual.
The solid pieces of carefully selected wood are connected on the top via the familiar (and beautiful) butterfly splines. The joinery of the table starts with dowelled brindle joints at the top of the legs then wedged through tenons just below where the stretchers come through the legs. The shelf stretchers are also wedged through tenons and the small member bracking between the legs is a dowelled mortise and tenon. The shelf spindles are hand shaved.
To see more work from Chris Armes and Sharon Khosla, visit 16th Workshop.
